


times that never came

by thnderchld



Series: jetko renaissance week [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fleabag au bc im trash also this was a hell of a thing to write, Gen, M/M, very annoying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thnderchld/pseuds/thnderchld
Summary: *Jetko Renaissance week day 1: confession* Following an invitation to Katara's wedding, Jet finds himself caught between past and the present.
Relationships: Jet/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: jetko renaissance week [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983511
Kudos: 14





	times that never came

  
  
  


_ Dear Jet _

_ Please come to my wedding. _

_   
_ _ Thanks, _

_ Katara. _

-

  
  


The first time Jet sees the priest, he’s in the bar on the way to Katara’s house. It’s a little bar on the corner of a main street, with a green sign and blinking lights. It is very distinctly English, in the sense that the mist and fog clambers up the windows. But the warm light beckons him in, and before he knows it he’s sitting at the counter waiting for a beer.

Jet lights a cigarette just as the door opens once again with a jingle of windpipes. 

He’d be a young man if not for the red scar stretching his skin taut. It kind of makes Jet’s heart drop to his stomach, if he’s being honest. From the moment he appears, Jet identifies him as a man of contrast. Sharp white skin beneath a black turtleneck, interrupted by violent red.

The man glances at Jet and narrows the one eyebrow he has left. “Something interesting?”   
  
Jet shakes his head. “Not at all.” Then, before he can even feel it, a smile is splitting his face in half. “Hi.”

The man ignores him, instead going to the other end of the bar and ordering a scotch on ice. Red-gold liquid slides, languishing around white ridges of ice. Jet snorts and finishes his beer, leaving a tip. “See you,” he says to the man.

-

It’s Katara’s engagement dinner. Technically, Aang should be there too, but he’s doing something with the rest of the monks. It’s a nicer restaurant than Jet’s used too, a barn location with minimalist food. It’s not exactly what Jet would choose. Glasses swirl around him, and a lazy jealousy fills Jet’s chest. He knows that he needs to reassess his meds, but recently they fill him with an icy numbness that burns as much as it chills. 

“Putting pine nuts on your salad doesn’t make you a grown up,” Katara is laughing.

“Fucking does,” Jet mutters under his breath. 

There’s a bit of a rustle, and then someone is sliding into the one vacant seat. “So sorry, I was- traffic,” Jet is wondering how there could be traffic in a town as small as this when his eyes make contact with red. That’s all there is.

Katara moves in for a hug and then turns. “Jet, this is Zuko. He’s the priest! And Sokka’s best friend.” Jet nearly scoffs but simply waves his hand in a friendly gesture. Zuko just watches him, which makes things really awkward considering they’re sitting adjacent. The two of them sit around their meals, listening to the conversation as it sloshes around the table like water in a fishbowl.

Jet’s gaze slides around the table, and he allows himself a moment to think. There’s Katara, of course, and her father. Then there’s Sokka- who is clearly not going to address Jet in the time of this conversation. Her eyes are alight with that practiced happiness that has eventually become real. 

There’s a crash and some yells, and Jet realises he’s dropped his glass. Red wine has splashed out across the tablecloth, leaving everything a kind of musty pink. 

“Shit,” he mutters, and then repeats it so everyone can hear. “So sorry, I’ll just grab a- some tissues- ahah.” He gets up and is blocked by a speedy waiter. That’s the kind of restaurant this is. Jet turns back to the table, and is met with multiple pairs of second-hand-embarrassed eyes. “I need a piss.”

He turns and goes not to the bathroom, but past it to the alleyway.

The lighter sparks in his fingers to the point that he nearly drops it. Who in their right mind has a wedding in November! He curses, but halts at the sound of a soft voice. “Careful.” He looks up and sees a woman; red hair bobbed to her shoulders and eyes the type of blue he can’t catch in the moonlight.

“Thanks,” he says, but all there is is shadows passing over a navy blue dumpster. The air smells kind of like blood, so he covers it up with nicotine.

He’s halfway through his cigarette when the door opens and the priest steps out. There’s no eye contact, but Zuko awkwardly shuffles closer. 

“Want a cig?” Jet holds it out and Zuko takes it in silence. “So you’re a cool priest, huh? Cigarettes and alcohol,” Jet laughs as Zuko glares. They don’t know each other well enough for this kind of banter. 

Smoke drifts through the alley in its comforting disgust. “Who were you talking to, just then?”

“What? Oh, nothing.”

Zuko turns to go.

“I wasn’t staring because of your scar,” Jet says suddenly, and Zuko stops at the end of the street. He makes a half-turn, and his gaze glances over Jet’s body. “I have a few grizzly scars too, so it made me-”

“Our scars have nothing in common.” Zuko raises his speed and is soon gone. Jet chuckles to himself.

He leans his head back against the brick and feels static in his scalp. Cool wind soaks over his skin, bathing him in a type of quiet light. 

“That was smooth.” It’s the same voice of the woman before. She’s amused.    
  
“Thanks, Suki.” He doesn’t open his eyes, instead hearing the soft ramble of her voice. The cigarette burns to the filter and he finally drops it into a pile of trash. His stomach burns something awful, like he’s going to throw up. He turns and heads to the car. 

  
  
  
  


_ - _

Over the next day, Jet finds himself thinking about the priest. There’s not any reason to, it’s not like they’ll bump into each other before the wedding. But there’s something about that frightened scowl that reminds Jet of the kids he helps in social work. He’s known several kids who go to religion as a source of healing, but most of them haven’t exited it.

He doesn’t know what it is that brings him to the churchyard. Not the building itself, of course, but he finds himself lingering among the gravestones. Part of him feels slightly dead, he thinks. He finds kinship with these people below the ground; no doubt by now rotting and hollow like old fruit. 

“Are you stalking me or something?” His attention is tugged to- of course- Zuko. He’s even in his priest habit, a black thing with a white collar. It looks good on him, Jet thinks, in the time it takes to process Zuko’s presence.

“It’s illegal to go for a stroll through the graveyard now, is it?” 

“It’s morbid,” Zuko tilts his face so that he’s giving Jet his good eye. “You don’t know anyone here, do you?”

“Sure I do,” Jet grins and puts a piece of grass between his lips. He found it on the border of the property, “Or- I don’t know them yet, but I will one day.”

If his eyes don’t deceive him, Zuko makes a snort. He twists away from Jet, catlike as he starts to walk along the path. He stops down by a grave and reaches to pull weeds from the flowerbed.  _ Florence Doyle, 1874-1917. Beloved wife and mother.  _

“Poor woman,” Jet mutters, tracing his fingers along the stone rendered green by time. Some of the other headstones are now so old that they are illegible- this woman will join them one day, Jet thinks.  _ And so will I.  _ “I wonder if anyone at all visits her.”

“The dead don’t care. Those aren’t them, just skeletons under the ground. They are with God now.” Zuko pauses, because he is currently doing just what he thinks strange, “This is my job. For the presentation of the church.” He frowns a little and pulls out the final weed. 

He starts to head back to the parish but Jet clears his throat. “Have dinner with me tonight, at the pub.”

Zuko doesn’t answer.

-

Jet goes anyway, waiting at the bar for someone that might not even come. He’s got a pint of beer inside him already, but all he does is watch the horse races on the pub TV’s. It makes him feel like more of a waster than usual. He sips foam from his glass and sighs. This is hard.   
  
Zuko sets down beside him, and sniffs. 

  
“Why’d you come?” Jet asks, and then regrets it. His voice sounds slightly raw under the influence of alcohol, and he’s been finding it difficult to sleep. Someone behind him reminds him that alcohol is a depressant, but he ignores it. “You didn’t have to.”

“You are very uniquely irritating,” Zuko shrugs and the bartender immediately goes for the usual. Jet is quiet; watches the man unscrew an amber bottle and pour it over rectangles of ice. It burns like fire, like Zuko’s eyes, swirling around the shimmering ice. Jet realises he’s missed hearing that. It feels like years.

“I am very unique.” Zuko laughs at that. It’s a frightened sound, like a mouse. Jet doesn’t dare look in his direction as he says, “Would you like to walk back to the parish after this? I could do with some night air.”

-

They walk in silence through the streets. Jet knows him. This is a sensation that grows inside him over the moments that they spend together. They go for almost an hour without talking, and the sounds of Zuko’s breath makes something clench in Jet’s chest. 

Without speaking, they drift into the church. Jet has never been religious. He tried to be for a time, but it didn’t really gel with him. He believes that something might be out there, but it certainly isn’t embodied by men of cloth- God would never exist inside a capitalistic system. He smiles at his own predictability.

A shadow moves at the corner of his eye and he turns without thinking. A curve of red hair glances out behind a pillar. He twitches, takes in a deep breath, and accepts the fact that Zuko is looking. 

“Who are you looking at?”

“No one-”

He winces at the twist of his words. “I would like to make a confession.”

-

  
He sits awkwardly on the wooden seat, his hands drumming against the wood. He doesn’t know how to do this. “Well, I have a lot of sins to begin with,” he laughs awkwardly, “Sodomy, self-pleasure, queerness. I’m a manic depressive wreck who is clearly possessed by something wicked, and I think my former self drowned a village or something because I just can  _ not  _ get a break.” He laughs around his fist, his fingers gripping his skin a little too tightly. “But mostly I think I’m just- everything is wrong. It’s  _ never  _ felt right. And I wish- I wish I could believe in God, because I just wish I could step in a direction without wondering where it’s taking me.”

He waits for something, anything, but Zuko remains quiet behind the wooden screen door. Not a breath escapes either of them, the tension lingering in the atmosphere that smells of pine and sweat of thousands before him.

“I want love but I don’t know if I can get it. Because I- I had love once and- and I lost it.”

  
“Katara?”   
  
“No. Some- someone else. And it was a different love.” He closed his eyes, “The kind of thing that makes me know what I’m going to do tomorrow. I’m going to call her, I’m going to arrange tea, I’m going to compare traumas. I’m going to look after her and I’m going to be looked after. I had it, once, and it was so much more beautiful than anything I can describe to you. Not a thousand encounters with heaven could ever compare to the beauty of that stability. But the stability was broken, and I can’t ever get it back.” His hands shake. “You can’t fix a relationship with a dead woman.”

He swears he can hear voices travelling past the confession box. He hears his name in a soft, cool voice. 

“The only reason I was invited to this wedding was pity and concern.”

Zuko makes a sound and Jet feels like he’s crumbling inward. He’s not okay. He wishes he were okay. It feels so much less escapable the older he gets, as if he’s wandering the earth in a cage of his own mind. Something burns, like alcohol, and he wishes he were still at the pub. The opposite of taking his suffering away, he feels it washing through him like a tsunami of pain. He is silent, not even making a whimper. Not a tear leaves his eye, and yet he sits there feeling like a marked Cain. A struck Abel.

The curtain slides open and he tilts his face upwards, to where Zuko stands above him with a face of calm understanding; pressed into that testimonial frown like paint over cement. He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t move. His golden eyes look like honeycomb moons; and before he knows it, Jet’s starting to cry. At least a year’s worth of tears build up and crash; and he rocks his body forward so his face is buried in Zuko’s habit. He shudders and sputters, nearly gagging from the pain of it all. A hand rests on the back of his head, holding him stable. 

He cries so hard that hours must have passed; though it is still dark. All the energy is gone from his body by the time he wipes his eyes. Zuko doesn’t look at him, but it’s not from embarrassment. It’s from respect. 

  
It’s pretty obvious that Jet can’t walk home tonight. Silently, Zuko leads him back to the parsonage and gives him a bed to sleep in. Jet’s words are all gone, his throat completely wracked. Still, Zuko senses the note of panic at the motion of leaving. Still clothed, Zuko slides into bed. 

He’s still there when morning breaks.


End file.
